


Bowing to the Inevitable

by Elvendork



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 11:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4390046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back, Watson supposes it was always going to end like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bowing to the Inevitable

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. I'm sorry. It just came to me. Please don't hate me too much.

Looking back, Watson supposes it was always going to end like this. He finds the inevitability comforting rather than unjust, though he knows he probably ought to be angry. He ought at least to be _defiant_ , but he is not. He has accepted his fate. He accepted it long ago.

Holmes looks sad and guilty above him, and something else Watson cannot define. His vision is fading, and he supposes he could blame this for the idea that he actually sees moisture in Holmes’s eyes, but he knows better now.

‘I am so very sorry, my dear friend,’ Holmes whispers softly. His arm is around Watson’s back. He is making no effort to stem the bleeding; they both know it is utterly pointless.

‘Don’t be,’ Watson replies with difficulty. He is shaking and cold. It is nearly time. ‘I’m not.’

‘Watson –’ Holmes’s voice is choked, and it is this more than the pain of his wound which Watson cannot stand.

‘I would not have changed it for the world,’ he interrupts. ‘The villain is defeated, and you are safe. I am ready.’

‘No, Watson –’ Holmes hardly seems to realise what he is saying. He is dazed, exhausted both mentally and physically, and all his rage has been spent – the body to Watson’s left, the body of Watson’s killer, is evidence enough of that. Holmes bows his head and squeezes both his eyes tightly shut. ‘No,’ he whispers again.

‘Enough of that,’ Watson murmurs weakly, struggling to raise a hand to pat Holmes’s arm in some parody of comfort. His heart aches to see his friend so wretched, and it is the only thing he regrets in this whole affair; that Holmes will be alone now. He forces his eyes to focus, wanting at least one last clear glimpse of Holmes before he slips away.

What he sees almost stops his heart, close as it already is to failing.

‘ _Holmes_ …’ he breathes, desperately, painfully, his whole body shaken with horror.

Holmes is bleeding. Holmes is _bleeding_ and doing nothing to stop it. Instinctively Watson tries to sit up, to move, to do anything – how could he not have realised that Holmes was injured?

‘It’s a scratch,’ Holmes reassures him unconvincingly.

‘You can’t…’ Watson’s voice is growing weaker by the moment. He heaves an agonising breath. ‘Please… you can’t…’

‘I will be fine, my dear fellow,’ Holmes is no longer making any attempt to hide the waver in his voice, or the thin tracks of tears streaming down his pale cheeks. ‘We shall both be perfectly fine.’

X

It is Inspector Lestrade who finds them, still curled in a dying embrace. It is impossible to tell whose blood is whose.

The first blow is pure shock; a sick, lurching feeling of disbelief, terror and denial.

The second is grief; deep and aching, dull and guilty and hollow.

The third is a sense of despairing inevitability.

Looking back, Lestrade supposes it was always going to end like this.


End file.
